Biography

Wesaam Al-Badry was born in 1984 in Nasiriyah, Iraq. When Al-Badry was seven years old, at the outset of what became known as the Gulf War, Al-Badry’s mother fled on foot with her five children, including his three-day-old sister, as artillery shells fell around them. After hiking all night, sometimes through knee-deep mud, they arrived at a refugee camp in Saudi Arabia.

In 1994, Al-Badry and his family were relocated to Lincoln, Nebraska after spending four-and-a-half years in a refugee camp. As a young man growing up in middle America, Al-Badry fiercely felt the disconnect between his experiences in Iraq and the refugee camps and his new American reality.

Bearing witness to the aftermath of the Iraq-Iran war that shaped the contemporary human condition into one of paranoia and distrust and his first-hand experiences living through Desert Storm and in refugee camps has sculpted Al-Badry’s work, which focuses on capturing the dispossessed, the alienated and ultimately, human dignity.

His series, Al Kouture, reveals the tension between Occidental and Arab-Islamic ideologies. By tailoring and repurposing couture silk scarves into niqabs, Al-Badry investigates female objectification at the intersections of both male and market desires. In exploring the possibilities of assimilation in a vast and polarized world, Al-Badry asks his audience, “Would the Western World accept the niqab if it were on the racks of luxury fashion designers?”

While his work focuses on photo reportage and documentary, Al-Badry also creates multimedia art that challenges and investigates social norms.

Al-Badry was featured in the exhibition Contemporary Muslim Fashions at the de Young Museum in San Francisco, now showing in Frankfurt’s Museum Angewandte Kunst. In December 2018, he was awarded the Dorothea Lange Fellowship to further pursue his photographic projects. His works were recently acquired by Stanford University’s Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts and the Toledo Art Museum. Al-Badry participated in Hank Willis Thomas’ For Freedoms Project.

His photographs have been featured in the New York Times, Artspace, NPR, The Huffington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, and 48 Hills. Al-Badry has also worked for global media outlets, including CNN and Al-Jazeera America. He received his BFA in Photography at the San Francisco Art Institute and is currently pursuing a Masters in Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley.

A Refugee’s Story: ‘No One’s Family Is Perfect but Mine Is Perfect for Me’

February, 12 2019

Berkeley News spotlights Wesaam Al-Badry

Dorothea Lange Winner Uses His Experience as a Refugee to Document Rural Life

January 28, 2019

When photojournalist Wesaam Al-Badry, a first-year student at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism, went to rural North Dakota to photograph a Native American family struggling to stick together in the face of poverty and isolation, he actually moved in with the Thunderhawks for a few weeks.

Wesaam Al-Badry interviewed by California Magazine

Photojournalist Wesaam Al-Badry on the Dignity of Suffering

January 4, 2019

Al-Badry, who was only seven when he fled Iraq with his family during the Gulf War, relocated to a Saudi refugee camp before finally settling in Nebraska. Now in his early 30s, he has a BFA in photography from the San Francisco Art Institute and is pursuing a masters in new media UC Berkeley’s J-School, where he’s learning about the art of investigation.

December 5, 2018

Wesaam Al-Badry discusses his work in the De Young Fine Arts Magazine

From Fashion to Discourse

December 1, 2018

Photographer Wesaam Al-Badry, born in Iraq, fled on foot with his family at the start of the Gulf War and stayed in refugee camps for four and a half years before relocating to the United States. Here he discusses the human dignity of the alienated and dispossessed.

Wesaam Al-Badry's work chosen as a For Freedoms billboard

October 5, 2018

For Freedoms outdoor activations invite artists to use the tools of art and advertising to encourage civic engagement. Wesaam Al-Badry's work, We Didn't Want War, will be featured as a For Freedoms billboard.

The Art Newspaper Features Wesaam Al-Badry at AIPAD

The Body Politic in the Age of Trump

March 30, 2018

“There’s certainly more politics, and more social-political points of view, coming out in the work that people are bringing this year,” says Richard Moore, the president of the Association of International Photography Art Dealers (Aipad), as he looks towards the organisation’s return to Pier 94, New York, for its 38th annual Photography Show (5-8 April).